Saturday, August 24, 2013

Mysteries of Technology

A family of four
is having dinner in a restaurant. The parents are middle-aged, their daughter
in her early teens, her brother about eight. There is little conversation at
the table: a word or two here and there, an occasional short sentence, a grunt,
a snort. They seldom make eye contact; each of them is focused on his or her
IPhone. It’s a scene right out of a subway car at rush hour. But the four are
not strangers, not commuters hidden behind newspapers. They are a family,
parents and children, each in a separate world, the world of the electronic
gadget in his or her hand.

In his apartment at the retirement
community, a man with too little to do fires up his computer. Among his e-mails
are three from his daughter, who lives on the other side of the country. The
first is a video of his three-month-old granddaughter lying on the bed, smiling
the world’s most beautiful smile. The second e-mail is a video of the man’s
two-year-old grandson looking out the kitchen door and calling the chickens.

“Here, chicken,” he says. “Here, chicken.”

He stares through the screen for a moment
then turns and runs toward the unseen woman with the electronic gadget in her
hand.

“Mama, chickens. Mama, chickens,” he says.

The third e-mail is another video. His
granddaughter is lying on the floor, laughing and excitedly shaking her little
arms and legs. Her brother enters the picture. He has a blanket, which he
carefully puts over her legs and stomach before bending down to gently kiss her
on the forehead.

Later, the phone rings. Does the man want to
Skype while the kids eat lunch? Of course he does. For a half hour, he watches
his grandchildren be children. And before the Skyping ends, he hears his
grandson say, “Hi, Grandpa.”

Strange, isn’t it? The technology that seems
to destroy the intimacy of a family crowded into a restaurant booth somehow
makes a grandpa feel so close to his grandchildren two thousand miles away. How
does it do that?